4. Tom Worker's Song by Kevin Adams
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Tom Worker was a Stony Stratford resident who lived and worked in the area during the first half of the last century. His life between the wars was dramatised in LAMK’s community musical documentary drama, Worker By Name (1992). Covering Tom’s schooldays and his working life at Wolverton Works throughout apprenticeship and the Depression years, the play’s subjects are mirrored in Kevin Adams’ poignant ballad.
‘I went over to Wolverton Works…’ I went apprenticing at the Wolverton Works. When I first started there in 1915/16, I was 14. I done 52 hours a week - six in the morning until half-past five at night, at that age! (Tom Worker, LAMK 1976) ‘There’s trouble in the air… ‘Now a young man starts to feel so old…’ I push-biked to Coventry, Birmingham and all over the place looking for work, I did. When you got down there, they’d say, Report at the Labour Exchange. Then when you get in there, they’d say, No, no more. You’d been there, got wet through and your clothes froze on you as you come home and you’ve been all that way and you get back, and you haven’t seen anybody. They told you there was nothing doing. (Tom Worker, LAMK 1976) Images and interview extracts from LAMK archive. The song is featured on the Living Archive Band’s album All That’s Changed Vol 2 (LAMK) and can also be accessed here: Tom Worker's Song | Kevin Adams (bandcamp.com) (Kevin Adams lead) |
Wolverton Works c1900
Sit-in strike at the Works, October 1925
Works employees c1910
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